The blinding light from the field suddenly dimmed, as if someone had turned down the brightness setting. I stepped in closer finding the unfamiliar shapes oddly comforting. The thick smell of rich dirt filling my nose. I looked over at my best friends, Landon and Michaela. Landon looked excited despite his reluctance to come, while his little sister looked about in awe.
   "Okay, we have about 45 minutes before they notice we are gone," he said glancing at his watch.
   "Maybe we should go back," I suggested. The only reason I had even agreed to come along was to get away from my always angry and yelling mom. Lately that was all that ever happened at my house and I just needed to get away, but the last thing I needed was for mom to yell at me for sneaking off into the woods.
   "No, we have a good 35 minutes to explore and find the fort," Michaela protested, and walked deeper into the woods ignoring the 'No Trasspassing' sign. The main reason for coming back into the woods was to find the old fort that we could see from our house. I glanced at Landon who was wrapping his hood around a stick that he had stuck into the ground.
   "So we know where to get out," he had explained. I nodded at then went after Michaela who was already a good fifty feet ahead of us. We followed the trail, that had been there for who knows how long, in the general direction of the fort. The fort was nowhere to be seen. Michaela was the first to get bored of looking.
   "Let's just go in deeper, we aren't gonna find it, especially with such little time," she whined. Landon looked as if he were about to tell us that would should probably go home instead, when I saw an odd patch of bright light ahead. I walked towards it, not bothering to wait for them, knowing that they would follow me. Sure enough they were right on my heals. We pushed aside some branches to find a small grassy meadow with a weeping willow at its edge. It was the sort of meadow that only exists in books. We stepped into it, warmth immediately hitting us, ever so different from the coolness the trees had given us. The three of us stood there enjoying the stillness and calmness of it all. That was the one moment durning this whole mess that I didn't feel like everything was going to fall apart.
   For once it was Landon to walk in deeper. We went past the Weeping Willow and into the forest again, this time enjoying the fact that we could get away from everything for a while.
   After a while we found an old blue house, right in the middle of the woods. Maybe people lived there maybe they didn't, we weren't sure, but we didn't want to find out. Frankly it gave us all the creeps. We walked to the point where we used up more than the time we actually had to get back home. We were talking about that when Michaela suddenly stopped. I was about to ask what was wrong when Landon shushed me. He pointed to our left. There was an old man with white hair, riding a lawn mower, just minding his own business. He hadn't noticed us yet. Michaela silently cursed and ran back the way we came. We both dashed after her not wanting the old man to catch us, we didn't even bother to take the long way around the creepy blue house, but instead just ran right through its yard, through the meadow and right back onto the trail. We would of ran right by the stick, if I hadn't tripped on it. Landon helped me up and took his hood.
   We made our way through the itchy  bright corn field a bit faster than I would of ever liked and didn't stop until we were on one our neighbor's yards where we all collapsed. For a while it was just the sound of our heavy breathing, until I started laughing. A pure genuine laugh that I hadn't had in a while. They both joined soon after as we tried to get up and out of the yard.
   We didn't get caught by anyone, we weren't in trouble, but we no longer cared, for once we did what we wanted. We went back countless times that summer. We stayed away from the old man and house. We never found the fort but we created our own nerve wracking adventure.